Along scenic Allen Parkway and five minutes from downtown, the Allen House Apartments are a local institution, a place college students, seniors, actors and journalists have called home.

The owners of the property want to make it a different kind of local landmark.

On Tuesday, residents there were told that the Boston-based real estate firm that has owned the complex for two decades plans to turn the 24 acres of prime land into Regent Square, a mixed-use urban village housing apartments, condominiums, shops and a boutique hotel.

For Houston, known for its suburban sprawl, Regent Square will be something different: an open, walkable neighborhood for living, working, shopping and dining.

The developer, GID Urban Development Group, a division of the General Investment and Development Cos., has hired seven architecture firms to design the project.

GID owns 12,000 apartment units nationally.

The first phase, scheduled to start construction in September and to be completed in 2010, will offer 740 apartment units, 230,000 square feet of retail, 60,000 square feet of office space and a hotel on two city blocks.

A future phase of the project GID hopes to complete by 2014 could have 1,000 more residential units, including three condominium towers, more apartments and another 100,000 square feet of retail space.

I feel bad for the residents of Allen House, who are all going to have to move from their reasonably-priced apartments. But Allen House is a landmark just because people know it’s there, not because of any particular architectural distinction that I’m aware of (unlike the nearby River Oaks shopping center), and its location is an excellent spot for this kind of mixed-use development.

If it’s done right, of course. The article mentions several other projects that the project manager at the architect who’s doing the master plan is involved with; I’m familiar with one, West Village in Dallas, and it’s a good project.